Neighbors
by William Easley
Summary: September, 2015, and when the Mystery Twins return to Piedmont, they learn that a little stranger is waiting for them. . . .
1. Chapter 1

**Neighbors**

 **(September 1, 2015)**

* * *

 **1**

The airliner set down at the Oakland airport about fifteen minutes late. Mabel, with her usual eagerness, jumped up while the plane was still taxiing to the jetway and popped the overhead bin. "Here you go, Brobro," she said, hauling down Dipper's laptop and duffel. "And here's mine!" She pulled down a pink overnight bag that she had decorated with a rainbow shooting star painting. "Let us out of this tin can already!"

They couldn't get out, though, until the plane had stopped, the jetway had connected to the door, and the attendants signaled that passengers could deplane. Even though they weren't in first class, Mabel made it out of the plane before anyone else. Dipper was about the twenty-fourth person out, and Mabel was nowhere in sight.

He lugged his computer and bag down the terminal corridor to the Terminal 1 baggage claim, where he supposed his folks would be waiting, peering around for Mabel. He paused to text her and then trudged on. His phone chirped just as he got to his goal:

WHERE R YOU DIPPY? MOM N DAD R READY 2 GO!

He texted back: IN BAG CLAIM. WHERE R YOU?

And she to him: DOY! BAG CLAIM!

Dipper craned around. DON'T SEE U. WHERE?

Mabel again: TRMNL 2 BAG CLAIM, DUMMY DUM

OK, so for some reason they were all over in the _other_ baggage claim area. Dipper, grumbling under his breath, made that long walk, too. He finally spotted them. "Why didn't you come to Terminal 1?" he asked his dad.

"Mabel texted us and said Terminal 2 would be faster," he said. "Turns out it wasn't, because we had to wait for you."

Dipper glared at his twin. "You didn't text me!"

"I thought you'd figure it out!" she objected.

"Our plane landed at Terminal 1! Why in the world would I come here?" Dipper asked.

She shrugged. "Well—there are all kinds of airlines using Terminal 1, and only one using Terminal 2!"

"You should at least have included me in the text!" Dipper said.

"You're the smart one!"

Dipper's mom cut in: "Mabel, please!" She gave Dipper a perfunctory hug and said, "We're all here now, anyway. Come on. We're in short-term parking."

Once they were in the car and headed home, Mabel begged their dad to stop at a restaurant so they could have some lunch.

Dipper's mood had begun to lift. "Grunkle Stan is shipping our trunks down," he said. "They should be here by the end of the week."

"So, what's the surprise?" Mabel asked.

"Wait, what?" Dipper asked

"You missed the conversation by being so slow, Broseph," Mabel said. "Mom and Dad have a big surprise for us."

"What is it?"

"You'll find out," Dad said.

"You've got someone new to meet at home," Mom said.

"A puppy! You guys! What'll we name him? What color is he? What breed is he? Is he a she-?"

"Not a puppy," Dad said firmly. "Just wait."

"Gah! I hate waiting!" Mabel said.

At Mabel's bouncy urging, they stopped at a Roam, a restaurant not represented in Oregon, where Mabel began to wolf down an outsized burger with chewy nom-nom sound effects. To give Mabel her due, the food was very good. Dipper had the best personal pizza he'd had that whole year.

"How was the summer?" their mom asked Dipper, probably assuming that Mabel couldn't speak intelligibly until the rapidly-disappearing burger was well down her gullet.

"Lot of fun," Dipper said. "We got to work in the Shack, and Soos paid us. Went hiking and saw some places in the Valley that we'd never visited. We went swimming in the lake. Oh, and thanks for forwarding the carton of my books that the publisher sent! I gave some of them away as presents. What did you think of it?"

"It looked nice," Mom said.

Dipper shrank a little inside. That meant she hadn't even bothered to read it. She seemed to consider his writing as just a hobby, _nice_ , but . . . not important.

"Keep up with your running?" Dad asked.

"Oh, yeah," Dipper said. "Wendy made me run five mornings out of every week. We did as much as five miles some days, and she timed my sprints. I'm holding my own, and I think Coach will be happy. Wendy's a great trainer!"

"She shrr zz," Mabel said, her mouth full. "She tchzz hm ltz v thngz!" She swallowed the way an ostrich will gulp down a tennis ball. "She sure is!"

Dipper kicked her beneath the table, but not too hard.

"I only hope you're both ready for school," Mom said. "You're going to have to bear down and study hard this year. Eleventh grade is very important. There's a tendency to slack off, so you'll have to work extra hard. I'll keep my eye on your grades."

Mabel swallowed the last bite of her burger and wiped her mouth with a napkin. "Hey, can we stop at the DMV and get our driver's licenses on the way home?"

"No," Dad said, laughing. "You have to arrange for that ahead of time. The license bureau's open only on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays—and you have to make an appointment online to take the tests. The earliest opening I could get for you is for next Friday, one PM."

"Friday!" Mabel wailed. " _Whaaaat?_ I can't _live_ that long without a license! I'll call them and tell them it's a matter of life and death!" She took out her phone.

"You will not call the DMV," her mother said firmly.

Mabel flopped face-down on the table, moaning. "How will I survive?"

"Do your best," Dad advised. "If it's any consolation, you can take your driver's test first, before Mason takes his."

"That doesn't help," Mabel told the table top. But she seemed more or less resigned to her fate, and Mom promised to drive them to the DMV on Friday afternoon and let them use her car for the behind-the-wheel test.

Half an hour later, as they drove into their neighborhood, Dad slowed the car. "Look to the right," he said.

Their old house was still there, of course. It had been repainted a light slate-gray, not a bad color at all, and two round flowerbeds thick with dark-green succulents had been added. A couple of girl's bikes stood in the driveway. "Someone new's moved in?" Dipper asked.

"Yes, a nice family," Mom said. "The Sheaffers."

"You'll like them," Dad added. "They've got twins, too—two girls, Mina and Mira. They're fourteen, I think. Right, Wanda?"

"Yes," Mom agreed. "But they also have a little boy—Billy."

Dipper felt a little chill. "Bill . . . Sheaffer?" he asked, his voice a little shaky.

"He's ten," Dad said. "Smart little guy. And guess what? His birthday is the same day as yours."

Mabel nudged Dipper and whispered, "What's wrong with you?"

He shook his head as they continued to the cul-de-sac and their new house and parked in the garage. "Ten, huh?" he heard himself ask.

"There's something you'll notice about him," Mom said quietly as they opened the car doors. "Don't let it surprise you and don't bring it up unless he does. He was born with only one eye."

Mabel turned pale and squeaked.

"His left eye is prosthetic," Dad said, slamming the driver's door. "It's very good—most people would hardly notice that it's not a real eye. But please remember not to stare at him."

Dipper swallowed hard. The Oracle and his great-uncle Ford had mentioned that if Bill Cipher were to be reborn as a human—it could be anywhere. Anywhen.

Ten years ago . . . . On the twins' sixth birthday, then, a baby was born somewhere with one eye.

But—

But it didn't make sense!

* * *

Dipper and Mabel went up to their bedrooms in the new house and unpacked by dumping their clothes from their bags onto their beds, planning to hang up everything later. And then they met in the middle, the room where Dipper practiced his music and Mabel practiced her art. "Is it him?" Mabel asked.

"Don't know," Dipper said. "But I'd say the chances are pretty good."

"Wait, my brain's gonna asplode," Mabel said. "If this boy's ten years old . . . then he was born like six, seven years before Weirdmageddon! How could Bill Cipher be him and the isosceles demon from the Nightmare Realm at the same time? How could he be in two places at once?"

"I . . . don't know," Dipper said. "We can't be in a whole different time line, because Weirdmageddon happened. We remember it. Later, Bill was there when the Horroracle nearly killed me. He warned us when Zanthar dug his way out and attacked. But—if he was also this kid—I can't wrap my head around it!"

"Could he be like _half_ Bill Cipher or something?" Mabel asked. "If he's ten now, he would've been six when Weirdmageddon happened, right?"

"Five," Dipper said. "Nearly six."

"So . . . what if he _wasn't_ Bill Cipher then . . . but _became_ Bill Cipher later on?"

"I don't know!" Dipper insisted. "Wait, in that dream I told you about, Bill said something to me—he said, 'my tabula is rasa.'"

Mabel gave him an uncomprehending glance. "Tabula? Isn't that a bone in the arm?"

"No, it's Latin. _Tabula rasa_. Means 'clean slate.' It's the idea that a newborn baby's mind is free of any impressions, that its experiences write on its slate and it gradually becomes a person by learning. That's the opposite of Platonic idealism, which assumes that all knowledge is innate in the mind from birth and it just emerges—"

Mabel elbowed him. "You're getting Grunklier and Grunklier, Brobro," she complained.

Dipper rubbed his neck. "I guess." He sighed. "I don't know what's going on," he admitted. "But I think the weirdness from Gravity Falls just might have followed us home."

* * *

Mabel asked their mom if she and Dipper could walk up the street to the Sheaffers' house and meet their new neighbors. Mom said, "If they're busy, just say hi and go."

They started a little after two o'clock. Sunny day, puffy white clouds scattered overhead. Different smells in the air from Oregon, less balsam pine and much more hydrocarbon. Different birds in the trees. A California towhee, which they didn't ever see in Gravity Falls, sat on a branch and serenaded them with its _peep-peep-peep chatterchatterchatter_ song. Not a woodpecker in earshot. Whole different vibe.

"I'm kinda scared," Mabel admitted.

"Me, too," Dipper said. "But—it's better to know than not to know."

It gave him a funny feeling to walk up to the front door of the house he'd lived in for so long. He took a deep breath and rang the doorbell.

A girl a little younger and shorter than he was opened the door. She was cute, dark, black-haired, brown-eyed, upturned nose. "Yes?" she asked in a musical sort of voice.

"Hi," Mabel said. "I'm Mabel. This is my twin brother Dipper. We used to live here. Now we live in the house at the end of the street."

The girl smiled. "We know your parents! I'm Mina. I'm a twin, too! Come on in."

It was strange, seeing the living room with a new coat of paint and different furniture. The girl said, "My name's Mina. Wait a minute, I'll get my sister and Mom."

Their mother came in drying her hands on a dish towel. She looked like both girls, and the girls were identical—Mira and Mina could switch places and Dipper would never be able to tell them apart. "Well," Mrs. Sheaffer said with a smile, "so you're Mabel and Dipper Pines! I've heard a lot about you."

"Don't believe it!" Mabel said. "I've only had one arrest and no convictions! Hah! I kid! Are you guys going to Piedmont High?"

"We're freshmen," Mira and Mina said in unison. Then they giggled. "We do that all the time!" Mira said.

"I hope we at least get different home rooms," Mina said. "Otherwise, nobody will ever learn to tell us apart."

"We'll show you the ropes!" Mabel said. She winked. "Some of the ropes you can skip, if you know what I mean."

"Where's Billy?" Mira asked.

"Probably reading," Mrs. Sheaffer said. "Go look in his room." Mira went upstairs.

"Our rooms used to be upstairs," Mabel said. "Mine was on the right, Dipper's on the left."

"That's Billy's room now," Mrs. Sheaffer said. "Mina's is Mabel's old room, I guess, and Mira's got the room that was the little office down the hall here on the first floor."

"Oh, boo!" Mabel said. "She's miles from the bathroom!"

"Not too far," Mina said. "She doesn't mind."

"Got him!" Mira said from the stairs.

Dipper and Mabel looked. A skinny ten-year-old with a shock of blond hair, a very pale kid, was coming down the stairs. He was wearing black shorts and a yellow polo shirt, not a bright yellow but almost a cream color. Dipper couldn't help staring. The boy's right eye was alert and blue. The left one matched it but didn't quite look real. It didn't move just right. The boy's expression was solemn. "Hi," he said, sounding shy.

For some reason, the voice gave Dipper a little sense of relief. It wasn't mocking and riotous. It didn't break out in a peal of mad laughter.

"Billy," Mrs. Sheaffer said, "This is Mabel and Dipper Pines. They used to live here in our house, and now they live down at the end of the street."

"Hi," Mabel said. "Hope you like the house!"

He smiled shyly. "Yeah, it's pretty lit. I like having my own room."

 _Maybe we were wrong._ The kid sounded like any younger boy trying to mimic teen talk. Dipper said, "That was my room when we lived here. Hey, there's a secret vault in the closet!"

"You mean the loose board in the floor?" Billy asked. "Yeah, I found it! I keep my comics in there."

"Hey," Mabel said, "we got a swimming pool in our backyard now! Anytime you guys want to come down, you're welcome to use it!"

"That's nice," Mrs. Sheaffer said, "but Billy doesn't know how to swim yet."

"Pfft!" Mabel said. "Dipper doesn't either, but he can lounge around and splash in the water. He never let that stop him! And he was an assistant life guard for a while!"

"How was he a life guard?" Mira asked. "I mean, if he couldn't swim?"

"It was a Gravity Falls thing," Mabel said. "You might not understand."

"What's a Gravity Falls thing?" Mina asked.

"Gravity Falls is a town up in Oregon. We spend summers there with our great-uncles while Mom and Dad take vacation trips," Mabel said. "My boyfriend's up there! He's my bae! And my squad's there, all my friends!"

Mrs. Sheaffer excused herself—she was doing something in the kitchen—and Mabel walked Mira and Mina down the street to see the Pines house. Billy took Dipper upstairs to show him his room.

Yeah, same room. They hadn't redecorated up there, same pale-yellow walls, very similar furniture, bed in the same place that his used to be, desk where his had been. Same shelves that Dipper had crammed with books. Billy had about half as many books, but a lot more plastic models of cars and airplanes. He'd done a very good job on them—not only well-assembled but painted in painstaking detail. Dipper admired a B-24 model. Billy explained it was patterned after one of the American planes that had bombed Tokyo very early in World War II. He talked about the Doolittle raid and how it hadn't really accomplished anything except raising American morale the year after Pearl Harbor.

"You like history?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, like to read about it. Don't like stories so much. You read much?"

"Lot of books about true-life mysteries," Dipper admitted. "And paranormal and stuff like that."

"What kind of hat is that?"

Dipper took off the fur trapper's hat. "It's kind of a lumberjack thing," he said. "I have a girlfriend up in Gravity Falls, and this is her hat, really. Her dad's a lumberjack, see. When I'm up there, I give this hat back to her and I usually wear a trucker's cap. We always swap out at the end of the summer. It's something to remember each other by."

Billy tilted his head. That bright blue eye was sharp. "Did you cut your forehead?"

With a sigh, Dipper pushed his hair up. "It's just a birthmark. I know, it looks like the Big Dipper. That's how I got my nickname."

"Oh." Billy smiled. "It's kind of neat."

After a few minutes, Dipper said it was time for him to go home, and Billy walked him downstairs to the door. "Hey, look," Dipper said, pausing on the front step, "if you want, you can come and see our house some time. Not right now, 'cause we just got back and sort of dumped things all over the place, but maybe this coming weekend."

"OK."

Dipper hesitated. "Do you—do Mabel and I seem familiar to you?" he asked.

Billy shook his head. "No. 'Cept you're twins, like my sisters. Well, not my real sisters. I'm adopted."

"I . . . didn't know," Dipper said.

"Yeah. My real mother died a few days after I was born. That's all I know about her."

"I'm sorry," Dipper said.

Billy shrugged. "My mom and dad are great. My dad's an assistant professor of literature at Mills College. He's a lot of fun. Tells like the worst jokes in the world, but you gotta laugh. Mom stays home, but she's kinda cool, too. When school's in, she does online instruction for a homework hotline. Summers, they take us places. We went to the Grand Canyon last month. It was hot."

"Well," Dipper said, standing on the lawn, "nice meeting you, Billy. See you around."

In the doorway, Bill said, "See you . . . Pine Tree."

And closed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Neighbors**

 **(September 1-2, 2015)**

* * *

 **2**

"I don't think it's him," Mabel insisted.

"He called me 'Pine Tree!'" Dipper said. "Nobody but Bill ever calls me that!"

They had eaten dinner and were, theoretically, putting away their clothes. Actually, they sat in Dipper's room. Dipper had put enough of his socks and underwear in the bureau to have room for them to sit on his bed—his pants and shirts were still all jumbled up toward the head of the bed. He and Mabel sat cross-legged, almost in Yogic poses, on the foot. "But he seems like a nice little kid," Mabel said. "Quiet and polite and dorky. And his sisters are cool! I mean, they're young, they have a lot to learn—"

Despite the strain he felt, Dipper sputtered with laughter. "They're fourteen! Two years younger than we are!"

"No, see, we're juniors," Mabel said. "They're lowly freshmen. I think I'm gonna have to big-sister them through the first difficult days of high school. It's a jungle. A jungle!"

Dipper couldn't argue with that. Piedmont was not that bad a place. However, he remembered all too well how the first weeks were rough, before he'd gone out for track, before Mabel had found her footing as an outstanding art student. As Wendy had once warned Mabel, there had been times when the Pines twins had felt isolated, as if everyone hated them. The bullying wasn't as physical as it had been in elementary school—no wedgies in the hallways, no tripping in the aisles—but Dipper, small for his age back then, heard the word "Shrimp" being tossed around, and not in the lunchroom.

He didn't fit into any cliques. The nerds were loners. Not until his second term at school, when he began to win a few races, did he feel that he sort of had friends—though his teammates didn't have much to do with him except during practice and meets. Mabel, always more outgoing, found students who sat with her at lunch. He sat with them, too, but hardly said a word. Everyone was interested in his nutty, funny sister, not in him.

So—yeah, Mabel was right. It helped if you had someone looking out for you in high school.

But—Billy Sheaffer was still in elementary school. "I've got a bad feeling," Dipper said. "If Billy is Bill reborn, then—what happens? What are we supposed to do? Be afraid of him? Help him? Why didn't the Oracle give me a book of instructions?"

"Well, Broseph, you don't get a _Living for Dummies_ book, you know. I still don't see it, though. He seemed like just a nice, ordinary little kid. He does have just one eye—but maybe that's a coincidence."

Dipper couldn't keep his voice down: "Coincidence? Bill Cipher, Billy Sheaffer? Yellow hair, yellow shirt? One eye? 'Pine Tree?' What'll it take to convince you? Does he have to call you 'Shooting Star' or lock you up in a bubble—"

"Shh-shh," Mabel warned. "Oh, I don't know! Look, say he is Bill Cipher somehow reborn ten years ago, even though back then we hadn't even been to Gravity Falls and had never heard of Bill Cipher and Weirdmageddon was still seven years in the future. You said something about a blank slate, right? He wouldn't even know us!"

"He didn't seem to recognize us," Dipper admitted. "Not like Bill."

Mabel put her hand on top of his. "Yeah. Bill would start with a hearty laugh and greet us warmly and then try to turn our bodies inside-out or something."

"I just wish—I wish the Oracle would give us some kind of hint."

"Well-it's still early in the game, Dipper."

"I guess."

And that was where they left it. For a few hours, anyway.

* * *

Three o'clock in the morning is the dead low ebb of night. When you wake up—for no reason—at three in the morning, the dark and the loneliness center on you and you feel that you may be the last living thing on the planet. Nothing behind you but the dark, nothing ahead but a deeper dark.

That's the way Dipper felt when he woke up and though it was breakfast time already before he saw the glowing numbers on the clock radio near his bed.

Three A.M.

Grunting, he rolled over in bed and yipped.

Something stood beside the bed, like one of the spirits in _A Christmas Carol_ come to show Dipper Pines the many errors of his ways. A pale figure, indistinct but faintly glowing, stood staring down at him.

And then he recognized Mabel. "What the heck!" he yelled, sitting up in bed. In his underpants and nothing else. He tugged the sheet over him. "Mabel, are you nuts?"

She stood beside the bed, wearing her faded old sleep shirt over short pajama bottoms. And somehow—she glowed.

Mabel stretched out a hand as if in slow motion. "Touch my hand and we will go," she said. It was her voice, but not her normal intonation.

"Mabel, cut it out. You're scaring me," Dipper said.

"I am not Mabel at the moment, Dipper Pines," Mabel said solemnly. "I am only borrowing her body. You asked me for a hint. Come and I will tell you plainly what you must do."

"You took over Mabel's body?" Dipper asked, shivering, remembering the puppet-show calamity. "Is—where is Mabel? Is Mabel OK?"

The glow vanished, and Mabel said in her normal voice, "Oh, wow, this is so weird! Like I'm being taken for a ride in my own body, but someone else is chauffeuring! Brobro! Back to tighty whities? Hey, lady with the eyes, make him put something on! I don't want to be seen in public with my nearly bare-assed brother!"

"Mabel!"

Her voice changed again: "Clothing means nothing where we are going, Dipper. But if it will make you feel more secure, dress quickly."

He pulled on jeans and tee-shirt, but then Mabel, or Mabel's body, linked her arm through his. "Close your eyes."

Dipper pulled away. "Can you give us one reason to trust you?"

"Dipper!" Mabel again, unmistakably. "Come on! Do what the nice monster lady asks!"

"It is for your benefit," she said in that calmer, softer voice.

Dipper put a hand to his head. "Wait, wait, it's confusing when there's two of you in there! Can you give me some sign when Mabel is talking?"

"OK, Dipdop, how's this? I'll start my sentences with a pet name."

"But . . . are you really Mabel?"

"Dipster, I'm ninety-nine per cent sure of it!"

"Let me test you." Dipper thought for a minute. "I don't think we ever told anybody about this. On Valentine's day in fifth grade, what did you do?"

"Aw, Brobro. I bought a whole pack of cards ahead of time and addressed them all to you and signed them with twenty fake names."

"And how many cards did I get in all?"

The Mabel figure sniffled. "Twenty, Broseph," she said softly.

"OK, sorry. If you want to go with the Oracle, I'm on board." He put his arm through hers. "Don't cry, Sis. It's one of my best memories of elementary school."

"This," Mabel said in the Oracle voice, "is why you have been chosen."

* * *

In stories, it's all very nice to be the Chosen One. All the way through, the audience knows you're going to bust loose at some point and kick serious ass. All those people who put you down and belittled you and laughed at you will learn to look at you with respect and awe, if you're the Chosen One.

Yeah, but.

Up until the end, over, oh, seven books or so, you get your own ass handed to you on a regular basis. Your relatives pick on you and give you things like one sock for your birthday. You're on the way to school and a snotty little horror tries to recruit you into a gang of thugs. You walk into the classroom, and the teacher glares at you and in a hostile, whispery voice, more or less suggests that you die.

Or you volunteer to take the ring back to the store and toss it into a volcano, and you make all these friends who promptly start to quarrel and fight and make your life miserable, and there are bees and spiders and, man, you are scared witless for about five hundred thousand words of story. And at the big moment something nasty bites off your favorite finger.

Or you sign on with a captain who lost a leg before the story even starts and he wants to have a word with the whale that took it off, so you go on this perfectly rational sea voyage to find him, and your whole crew gradually dies off and then the damned whale snags the captain and drags him under the water to drown, and if your best friend in the whole world hadn't had his coffin ready, you would drown, too . . ..

And awful things happen all the time, and even your friends blame you. But, hey, that's OK, you old Chosen One, you!

Yeah, your life's gonna suck for the whole foreseeable future, but just wait, man! You'll get such a pay-off!

And then . . . the story just ends, right? Except maybe for an epilogue that leaves half of the readership fuming.

Dipper had all that in mind as the Oracle, in Mabel's body, said softly, "Close your eyes. This may be disorienting."

Dipper felt as if the floor beneath him had opened, and he fell straight down for 1947 feet. He counted. Then he was on the Tilt-a-Whirl, and blasts of withering heat and bursts of freezing cold hit him as it swept him from hell to Antarctica and back again. He couldn't breathe and suspected that was because here, wherever here was, no air existed to breathe.

And then things steadied down. "You are here."

"I kept my eyes open," Mabel announced proudly. And promptly threw up.

"Mabel!" Dipper said. "You spoiled the carpet!"

"Never mind that." The Oracle—now a separate being, the hooded, seven-eyed woman that Dipper had seen before in a dream or vision—snapped her fingers, and the whole carpet vanished, to be replaced by a different one—a patchwork carpet, with question marks, pine trees, shooting stars, spectacles, six-fingered hands, a bunch of—fish, whatever that thing was on Grunkle Stan's fez was, bags of ice, pentacles, and broken hearts, all woven into the complex design.

The pool of barf had vanished.

"Here," the Oracle said, handing Mabel an hourglass-shaped cup of something pink with sparkles swimming through it. "This will settle your stomach."

"Thanks, lady!" With no sign of caution, Mabel chugged the whole cupful down in a long series of swallows. "Mmm! Tastes sparkly!"

"Something for you, Dipper?"

"Uh, no, thank you. Where are we?"

It wasn't the infinitely huge, infinitely tall structure he had visited before, something like the Roman Colosseum built by contractors with an unlimited budget and delusions of grandeur. Instead, they seemed to be on a mountaintop, standing in front of a castle—the summit grew lush with tall blue-green grass, and all around them billowed tall white clouds, like the ones he loved to watch when at the window of an airliner. Through occasional breaks he glimpsed a beautiful wooded landscape far below.

"This," the Oracle said, "is what Stanford Pines called Dimension 52. It is my world."

"Kinda lonesome, isn't it?" Mabel asked. "Pretty, though."

"I have visitors every now and then," the Oracle said with a smile. "A gentleman with bad digestion and a grandson shows up occasionally, asking me to hide him from the law. There is this young couple with some interesting scissors. Others. I know when they are coming, and I know what is best to do for them."

"Do you . . . do it?" Dipper asked.

"No." When he looked shocked, she said, "Often times, it is best they work out their own destinies. At most, I give them a little push. The two of you . . . are rather different. Let's go inside."

By the time she pronounced the word "inside," there they were, in a room with a tapestry and . . . floating bubbles? They rose from around ankle level and soared upward. Some of them became luminescent and furnished light. Others popped out of existence.

"I keep my eyes on all dimensions," the Oracle explained before Dipper could ask about the bubbles. "I believe you have met the Axolotl." She gestured toward the tapestry, which showed a friendly-looking albino . . . salamander?

"Don't remember that," Mabel said. "But he looks adorable!"

"Your meeting happened," the Oracle said, "and then the Axolotl unhappened it."

"That makes me unhappy," Mabel said, but she was giggling. "Get it?"

"I knew she was going to say that," Dipper muttered.

"Well—in Dimension 52, sensitive people gain a limited prescience."

"Lady," Mabel said, "I like your house, but how's about another cup of sparkle juice?"

"Certainly," she said. "Dipper, you do need to drink something."

"Uh, just—plain water?" he said.

The Oracle handed another pink, sparkling drink to Mabel and immediately turned and gave Dipper an hourglass-shaped cup of clear water. It had just materialized and felt icy in his grip. He sipped it and his eyes widened. "This—it's—it brings back Gravity Falls!"

"Glacial water," the Oracle said. "I brought it from ninety thousand years before your present day, when the whole Gravity Falls Valley was a sheet of ice. The alien ship rested on the surface of the Valley then. Only when the ice melted and formed a lake did it vanish beneath the silt layer that became the soil of Gravity Falls."

"This even _tastes_ like Gravity Falls!" Dipper said, blinking. "And I don't even know how that's possible!"

"Gimme," Mabel said, grabbing the cup and sipping. "Hey! He's right. There's . . . let's see . . . cunning and greed, that'd be Grunkle Stan, and, mm, the icy-blue taste of thought, Grunkle Ford and maybe Old Man McGucket, whoa! Peppermint! Wendy, definitely Wendy, and in the mood for—"

"That's enough," Dipper said, snatching the cup back from her. "Drink your sparkles."

The Oracle watched, seemingly amused. "Our time here is infinite," she warned, "so let's be quick. I will answer three questions each. Mabel, what is your first?"

"Can you buy this stuff in California?" Mabel asked, holding up the cup of sparkly stuff. "'Cause, Lady, it is delish!"

"No," Jheselbraum the Unswerving said with a smile. "Dipper?"

"Is Billy Sheaffer really Bill Cipher?"

"Yes. And also no."

Mabel shook her head. Nothing rattled. "Wait, can you explain that?"

"Yes, I can."

They waited. "That's the answer," she said.

Dipper groaned. Mabel was down to one question, and he only had two. "What do you want us to do with Billy Sheaffer?"

For a long time, he didn't think the Oracle would answer. When she did, she preceded her words with a deep sigh. "I am not the Axolotl. He resides in the space between dimensions and knows and sees much more than I. My impulse would be to end Bill Cipher. I believe he has forfeited his right to exist. But I bow to the Axolotl's wisdom. What should you do with Billy Sheaffer? Befriend him. He will grow into knowledge of who and what he is. He is not yet there. He will get there. Before he does—you and Mabel must teach him to be . . . human."

"Is he gonna try to end the world again?" Mabel asked.

"That depends," the Oracle said.

"On what?" Dipper asked, forgetting that this would be his last question.

"On you two." Before they could speak she raised a blue-gray hand . . . and pure light shone from its fingers. "I will watch. If necessary, I will try to send help when you most need it. You two do not know how rare your hearts are. Use what you feel in them to help the boy Billy Sheaffer learn to act with compassion and not with a thirst for power. Teach him to laugh, but not at others' misfortunes. He has one life to prove himself worthy of redemption. Teach him to lead it so that when he leaves it, the world will for his presence there be a kinder and happier place." She reached out with both hands and touched both Dipper and Mabel's heads as though in blessing. "It's a small favor you can do not for Billy or for Bill, but for the Axolotl. And for your world. Now close your eyes."

* * *

Three A.M.

Grunting, Dipper rolled over in bed and yipped.

Something stood beside the bed, like one of the spirits in _A Christmas Carol_ come to show Dipper Pines the many errors of his ways. A pale figure, indistinct but faintly glowing, stood staring down at him.

And then he recognized Mabel. "What the heck!" he yelled.

Wait a minute—he was wearing a tee shirt and jeans. "Mabel?"

Mabel crawled into his bed. "Dip? Did—did that really happen? I mean, the weird seven-eyed lady?"

"I . . . think it did," he said.

"Rats. She gave us three questions and I blew it. Move over."

He moved over beneath the cover, and she stretched out beside him on top of the cover. "Mabel," he said, "this makes me uncomfortable."

"Nothing creepy's gonna happen, Brobro. I'm going back to my room in a minute," she muttered. "I just—I gotta—gotta think this thing—wow. Just wow. So, I guess I'll volunteer to babysit Billy when the Sheaffers need it. And you—maybe you can, like, tutor him in math or something."

"I guess," Dipper said. Inside, though, he felt a strange revulsion at the very thought. _What if I screw up?_

"Damn," Mabel grunted. "I wasted my most important question."

"What was that?" Dipper asked.

She got up. "What kind of car are Dad and Mom gonna give us after we pass our license test next Friday. Goodnight, Dippingsauce."

"I guess we're saddled with this," Dipper murmured.

"Looks like it. One bright side to it, though."

"What's that?"

"We beat Bill Cipher three times," she said. "If we gotta—we'll do it again."

Mabel left his room, closing the door softly.

Dipper hoped she was right. Still—

He didn't get another wink of sleep for the rest of the night.


	3. Chapter 3

**Neighbors**

 **(September 2-4, 2015)**

* * *

 **3**

On Wednesday after breakfast, Mabel asked, "Dip? Did it all really happen?" She looked frazzled, purple circles beneath her eyes—Mabel rarely lost sleep, and when she did, she showed the effects. She suppressed a yawn. "Was it real?"

For once, her eye-bags were worse than his. Dipper caught the yawn from her, and when he could talk again, he said, "Let's compare notes."

For half an hour they talked over what they remembered. They agreed on the general flow of things and on most of the details. "Yeah," Mabel said, frowning. "Some of it I'm kinda fuzzy on, though. Maybe that was when what's-her-name was in the driver's seat. That was the weirdest of all—me just being there in my own head but someone else making my mouth move and words come out. You remember that, don't you?"

"I remember. Sis, it was like when Bill took over my body—except the Oracle didn't just kick you out. It feels awful."

"It wasn't so bad. But I guess it all really happened," Mabel said. "That white thing with the eyes and the little bushes growing out of its cheeks—the thing in the tapestry—that's the Axolotl?"

"I . . . think so," Dipper said. "It looks like the pictures I've seen online. Real axolotls, though, Earthly ones, are salamanders from Mexico. The little bushy things are gills. Most salamanders lose them after they go through the tadpole stage, but axolotls don't grow up. This . . . thing, being, isn't a salamander, though. It's kind of a force or maybe a spirit. Grunkle Ford says it manifests in the form of the salamander because if a human saw it as it really is—well, a normal human brain couldn't grasp its reality."

"Ours shouldn't have a problem, though," Mabel said. "Now, wait. The Oracle and the Axolotl aren't the same, are they?"

Dipper shook his head. "The Axolotl has a lot more power. And the Oracle said she lives in Dimension 52. The Axolotl lives, uh, in between dimensions. Somehow. Anyway, the two are different."

They were sitting in the back yard, on two lawn chairs. Mabel kept fidgeting with her hair. "Uh—am I wrong, or does the Oracle think Bill should've stayed dead?"

"She doesn't like him," Dipper told her. "In Journal 3, Grunkle Ford wrote about meeting her. She was helpful, and he thinks she's, like, the opposite of Bill. He said she's not vengeful or even angry, just cold and determined that Bill's reign had to end."

Mabel leaned back in her lawn chair, squinting against the morning sun. A dragonfly long as her thumb buzzed up and helicoptered in front of her. She put out a hand with her thumb up, and the insect landed on it, flexing its legs. It had a striking blue head and a black body with blue stripes. "Hello, Mr. Dragonfly," Mabel said.

"That's a blue-eyed darner," Dipper told her. "They feed on mosquito larvae. Getting late in the season for them."

As though alarmed at how little time it had left to gorge on mosquito babies, the dragonfly buzzed its transparent wings and sprang into the air.

Watching it go, Mabel murmured, "But even though the Oracle hates Bill's guts, the Axolotl—am I saying that right? The Axolotl decided Bill could have this one last chance, and the Oracle has to go along with that. And we're supposed to help somehow. But . . . is she using us? Has she made us into a part of her plan to destroy Bill?"

Despite the seriousness of the question, Dipper had to smile. "Hey, I'm the one with the crazy conspiracy theories, remember?"

"Yeah." His sister stretched and sighed. "But that creepy name of hers—the Unswerving—it makes her sound pretty stubborn."

"That's just a title," Dipper said. "Like Ivan the Terrible or Peter the Great—"

"Blind Ivan?"

"No, you know, a czar of Russia. Both of them were, Peter and Ivan, I mean, but Ivan was terrible, and Peter was great."

"If I was Czar of Russia, they'd call me Mabel the Incredible. Or maybe Mabel the Fabulous!"

"Yeah, I'm sure they would. Hey, do you know where the word 'czar' comes from?"

Mabel gave him the dull-eyed stare she always did when he went full-tilt Grunkle Ford on her. "Um—it's a translation of 'tsar?'"

Dipper took a pair of dark sunglasses from his pocket and put them on. "No. Well, yeah, in a way, but they're just different ways of transcribing the word from the Cyrillic alphabet—"

"The what with the which now?"

Dipper went inside and returned with a volume of his dad's antiquated encyclopedia—one he'd had in college—and showed Mabel. "It's just a different alphabet from our Roman one. Anyhow, both 'czar' and 'tsar' are the same word, really, and what it means is 'Caesar.' Because in the Middle Ages, a Bulgarian emperor took the title to show that he was a ruler equal to the Emperor of Constantinople, and the word passed down through several nationalities until the Russians took it for their leader in the sixteenth century, I think it was."

"Bor-ing," Mabel decreed.

"OK, I was just trying to explain."

Mabel giggled. "In those glasses you remind me so much of Dippy Fresh!"

Dipper took them off and tossed them into the pool.

* * *

Later that morning Mrs. Sheaffer phoned to ask if her kids could come over because she had shopping to do and the twins and Billy didn't want to go to the supermarket.

Wanda Pines said sure—and so for about two hours that afternoon, Mira, Mina, and Billy came to their house for a visit. They hadn't brought their swimming gear, but they looked at the pool in the backyard and made plans for a swimming party on Sunday afternoon. Billy asked what the dark thing on the bottom of the pool was.

"A bad memory," Dipper growled.

The Sheaffer kids hadn't yet been to Piedmont Park, so Dipper and Mabel walked them over—it wasn't very far—and Dipper cautioned them: "This place is pretty safe, but you know, you never can tell, so don't ever come here if you're alone. And watch out for the trails that look lonely. It's best to stick to the public areas."

"My Brobro is such a worrywart," Mabel said with a grin. "But, yeah, he's got a good point. You guys always come together and stick together and if a strange man comes along and offers you a ride in his car, run away! It may be our Grunkle Stan, and he's a rotten driver."

"We know about Stranger Danger," Billy said.

They fooled around on the playground for a while, then went back to the Pines's house for a snack. Afterward, Dipper took Billy upstairs and they played video games. Dipper noticed that Billy was very good at first-person shoot 'em ups—he beat Dipper's score on "Shoot the Mooks"—but below average on driving and flight simulators. Probably his depth perception, Dipper decided, or the lack of it. He wondered what it would be like driving with just one eye.

"Hey," he said after they'd played for almost an hour, "do you have a game system?"

"An old one," Billy said. "A Game Guy Mark 5." That was two generations old.

"I've still got a bunch of games for that one," Dipper said. "I don't play them anymore, so if you want, you can have any of mine that you want. All of them if you'd like to have them."

"To keep?" Billy asked, sounding pleased and surprised.

Dipper grinned. "Sure."

Billy took all fourteen games. Dipper wouldn't miss them—he hadn't played any of them since he turned thirteen. After Weirdmageddon, they'd started to seem horribly lame to him.

Mrs. Pines came upstairs and said, "There you two are! Billy, your mother just called. She'll be back home in a few minutes, and you and your sisters can help unload the groceries."

"I'm giving him these games," Dipper said, collecting the cartridges and putting them in a plastic bag.

"About time you got rid of some clutter," his mother said, with an approving smile.

Dipper and Mabel walked the Sheaffer kids back to their house. Dipper and Billy lagged behind and impulsively, Dipper asked, "Hey, Billy. Why'd you call me 'Pine Tree' yesterday?"

Billy blinked. His artificial eye didn't blink quite right—the eyelids didn't fully close, but you had to look close to notice that. "Did I?" He shrugged. "I dunno. Sometimes weird stuff just pops into my head. Didn't mean to make you mad."

"I'm not mad," Dipper said. "It's just—well, I told you about me and my girlfriend trading hats every summer. The one of mine that she wears during the rest of the year is white and blue and it has a pine-tree symbol on it."

"Oh," Billy said. "Huh. Guess that was one of my flashes."

"Your what?"

"I get them now and then. I don't know why. Just something will pop into my head and I'll say it out loud and it means something. Like when I was little, one day I told my mom, 'My real mother died.' I don't even remember saying that, but Mom and Dad do. Back then they'd never told me I was adopted. I thought Mom was, you know, my, what do you call it, my real mother. Had me."

"Biological mother," Dipper said.

"Yeah, that's it. Anyway, when I asked, I made her cry and I felt bad about it. That evening she and Dad told me how I was adopted. My biological mother only lived for two days after I was born. Until then, I never knew."

They reached the Sheaffer house—where Dipper and Mabel had lived so long—and at almost the same time, Mrs. Sheaffer turned into the driveway and opened the driver's door of her SUV. "There you are! I'll get the cold stuff and frozen out. Canned and boxed goods in the trunk! You know where to put them."

As Mina, Mira, and Billy started to wrangle shopping baskets full of groceries—Mrs. Sheaffer used those fabric ones, which kept her from bringing home plastic bags—Dipper and Mabel walked back home.

As soon as they were away from the Sheaffers, Mabel asked, "Anything new?"

"He says he has no idea where 'Pine Tree' came from," Dipper said. "I don't know whether to believe him or not."

"I guess we just keep an eye on him, then—oh, man!"

"What is it?" Dipper asked, alarmed.

Mabel pointed. "You didn't shut the door quick enough. Cat the Ripper got out again!"

Ripper was a softly round, slow-moving, charcoal-gray cat. Despite his fearsome name, he was basically an animated lump, too fat and lazy to chase birds. Dipper suspected he'd retreat if a mouse approached him.

The cat was ambling around the front yard, and Mabel scooped him up without a protest from him. When he'd been a kitten, Mabel had carried Ripper around by gripping him beneath his forelegs, with his hindquarters and tail dangling, but now he was big and heavy enough to object to that, so she held him draped over her shoulder. He stuck his tongue out at Dipper, walking behind, and started to knead his paws against Mabel's sweater.

* * *

On Thursday Mom took Dipper and Mabel out driving—a practice run for the driving test. They spent nearly three hours on the road, but Mrs. Pines wasn't satisfied with either of them. "Watch the speed!" she cautioned Mabel as her daughter's turn at the wheel was ending.

"I haven't gone over the limit," Mabel complained, turning into a parking lot so they could change drivers.

"Just because the speed limit is 45 doesn't mean you _have_ to go 45!" Mom told her. "Especially when there's a turn coming up. Just use a little common sense. You know, going too fast is a fault that will cost you your license."

Mabel grumped a little as she parked. Mom said, "All right, get in the back seat and fasten your—"

"I always fasten the seatbelt," Mabel said.

"Dipper, it's your turn."

Dipper got out and went round the car to the driver's side. He wasn't all that fond of Mom's RAV4, though Mabel loved it.

He got in, went through the ritual that the twins would be expected to perform in the pre-driving check at the DMV, and then said, "Where to?"

"Just head home. Backtrack," Mrs. Pines said. "Keep your mind on what you're doing."

She didn't say "unlike Mabel," but Dipper sensed her meaning. He started the engine and drove out of the lot, deliberately keeping well under the speed limit.

However—

Mom said, "Dipper, don't drive like a robot! You're too stiff! Relax and be natural. And please don't keep telling yourself what you have to do!"

"Was I doing that?" Dipper asked.

Mabel laughed. "Yeah, you were! 'Close the door. Check the seatbelts. Make sure everyone else is wearing their belts. Look in the rear-view mirror. Put the key in the ignition . . ..'"

"Well, it helps me remember," Dipper said.

"Yes, but you'll sound insecure if you do that when the observer is grading you," his mother said.

"Mom—this is Dipper! His middle _name_ is Insecure."

"Try to hide it," their mom suggested.

Dipper sighed. Sometimes he felt that he couldn't win, no matter what. But he clamped his mouth shut, remembering with a flush of embarrassment when Wendy told him she aready knew about his crush on her—in fact, she'd learned it from him: "You think I can't hear that stuff you're constantly whispering under your breath?"

That had been awkward.

Still, when they got home, Mabel asked Mrs. Pines "How'd we do?"

Grimly, their mother shook her head. "Maybe," she said, "they'll have mercy on you."

* * *

Then on Friday, the big test came. The morning began gray with fog and drizzle, but by the time they set off for the DMV, the sun had broken through, the pavement had dried, and it had become a nice afternoon.

Mabel was eager. Dipper—not so much. He hadn't had all that much practice with the RAV4, and it was a little harder to drive than Wendy's Dodge Dart—though much easier than the Stanleymobile, which drove, Wendy said, a little like a tank, and she would know.

Mabel took the behind-the-wheel test first, he went second, and while waiting, Dipper got nervous. That began as Mabel drove the observer away from the DMV lot, and he wondered whether he'd ever see either of them again.

But he did—after about twenty minutes, Mabel pulled back in and parked the RAV4 near where she and the observer had first climbed in, making a neat job of it and keeping all four tires well within the painted lines of the parking slot. As they got out of the car, Mabel was asking, "How'd I do, how'd I do, how'd I do? Did I pass? I didn't actually hit anything, you know!"

The observer, a harassed-looking woman, rolled her eyes. "You made one error in the pre-drive checklist, no critical errors, and I counted five in the on-the-road part. You work it out."

"Wah!" Mabel wailed, flailing her arms. "I'll go crazy!"

"You passed, Sis," Dipper assured her. "You can pass if you make up to three pre-drive errors, no critical ones, and up to fifteen driving errors, as long as they're minor—oof!"

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Mabel said, hugging him like a starving boa constrictor encountering a mouth-watering peccary. "Hey, DMV lady! This is my brother. Treat him right! As an officially licensed driver-to-be and as an honorary Congressperson, I'm asking you nicely!" She raised a hand to shield her mouth and whispered to the observer—but still loud enough for Dipper to hear—"Don't be too hard on him. He's a little S-L-O-W."

"I am not!" Dipper said.

"Look," the observer said, rolling her eyes as she turned to a fresh evaluation sheet on her clipboard, "let's just get this over with, OK? Start your pre-drive check."

It was a checklist, so Dipper was in Dipper heaven. He'd memorized the list months earlier.

It held seventeen items in all, and he verbally ticked them off one by one and in the correct order, from proving that the driver's window opened, and leaving it open, to showing he knew where things like the turn signals, emergency flashers, and brake lights were and checking them all to verify that they were operating properly. He finished by making sure that his and his passenger's seat belts were fastened.

In the passenger seat beside him, the observer made a horizontal mark and wrote "P" beside it, which looked encouraging. P for passing.

Then he started the engine, checked the rear-view mirrors, and cautiously backed out of the parking space. Mabel said, "Hey, Mom, while they're gone, can I go to the license desk and pose for my photo?"

"Let's wait," their mother said.

"I hate waiting."

* * *

And after another twenty minutes, Dipper drove the RAV4 back and parked it, just as neatly as Mabel had done. He got out and gave her a smiling thumbs-up.

"OK," the observer said, making a couple of final notes on the clipboard. "Kids, let's go get your licenses."

* * *

"What was it, what was it, what was it?" Mabel asked in the car on the way home—Dipper was at the wheel, Mom beside him, and Mabel in the back seat behind her. "Come on, Brobro, I _gotta_ know! She said you had one error on the driving test. What was it? What one mistake did you make?"

"I was slow signaling for a right turn," he said at last. "That was it. One error in all. Period."

"Well—anyhow, I beat you on the written test!"

There were forty-six questions on the written test, and you needed a score of at least 38 to pass. Mabel had racked up a 45, Dipper 44—mainly because he second-guessed himself and changed two correct answers to incorrect ones at the very last moment. One had to do with negotiating roundabouts, and the other with the distance from an ungated level railway crossing at which a driver had to slow to fifteen mph. He'd almost chosen the first option—100 feet—but then, with a burst of caution, he went for the third, 400 feet, instead. The first one was correct.

"It's not a game where you have to keep score. You both passed," Mrs. Pine said in a faintly exasperated tone. "Be glad of that, Mabel."

"Yeah, I am, but it's still not fair that I can't have a friend in the car with me!"

"Yes, you can," Dipper said as he turned into their neighborhood. "If your friend is over twenty-five, or if you also have someone else who's over twenty-five in the car. Like now, we can drive with each other as passengers 'cause Mom's with us. We've got to have another year's practice before we can carry teen passengers with no adult supervision."

"It's only six months in Oregon!" Mabel complained. "Hey, maybe we can get Oregon licenses, too!"

"Doesn't work that way." In the cul-de-sac, Dipper took the garage-door opener from its compartment and opened the left garage door—Mom always parked in the single bay, Dad next to it in the double bay. "Whoa!"

As soon as he braked to a full stop, Mabel spilled out of the back seat and ran to the unfamiliar car parked inside the garage, hood facing outward. It wasn't brand-new, and Dipper had a feeling that, given her choice, Mabel surely wouldn't have chosen the lime-green color, but the Carino—a mid-sized sedan—had to be a gift from their parents. Mabel hugged the hood, rubbed her cheek against it, and kissed it.

Their dad came out of the house smiling and said, "Belated happy birthday, kids! OK, here it is. You'll have to share it. It's all paid for and insured. It's three years old, but I had it checked out, and it's in great shape. No dents or dings, so keep it that way."

"A four-door midsize?" Dipper asked, closing the door of his mom's car. It wasn't exactly a dashing vehicle.

"It's rated in the top three for safe cars for new drivers," his dad said. "I did the research. Hey, Mabel—here's the keys. Take me for a drive!" He tossed the keyring to her, and she fielded it with a jingling overhand slap-catch.

"Woohoo! I'm officially naming her Helen Wheels!" With a loud war cry, Mabel jumped into the driver's seat of the Carino, rolled down the window, honked the horn, and leaned out. "Hey, Dip! Get that hunk of junk out of my way! Me an' Dad are gonna hit the road!"

Dipper got back into his mom's car and carefully backed out of the drive, opened the double garage bay door, and pulled in and parked next to their dad's car. He got out and came to stand beside his mother, watching the green machine—Helen Wheels, he guessed—roll away.

"I worry about Mabel," Mom confessed as the Carino headed down the street, perhaps just a tad fast.

Dipper smiled. "We all do, Mom. We all do."


	4. Chapter 4

**Neighbors**

 **(September 5-6, 2015)**

* * *

 **4**

Saturday Mabel spent begging for errands—dry cleaning? Pick up something at the grocery store? Anything from the pharmacy? Go to the shipping office and see if the trunks had arrived? Anything! Anything to get her behind the wheel of their car!

No, no, no, no. No, Mabel. Mabel, I said no!

But finally Mom gave up and told her to go to the post office before it closed at 1:30. "Buy twenty stamps," she told her. "I'll get the money for you."

Then she gave Mabel some cautionary words as well as the cash: "Now, don't drive on the freeways and don't go to Oakland or someplace. Go to the post office on Lake Park. Take Lakeshore, not some other long way around. Keep your door locked, and don't forget to lock the car when you park it. Don't dawdle and don't speed, and don't go out of your way."

"Aw," Mabel complained, faking a pout. "I was gonna drive up to Oregon and show Grunkle Stan our wheels and pick up the stamps at the Gravity Falls post office."

Mom looked as if she were going to explode, but then she laughed. "Oh, I'm sorry! But cars and teens—now I have a whole new thing to worry about. Be careful. Do you have your phone?"

"Got it!" Mabel said. "Where are my keys?"

"I don't know," Mom said.

"Brobro! Lend me your car keys!"

Dipper, who lay stretched out on the sofa with a legal pad and pen, deep in planning the third book in his YA series—he hoped to write most of it before New Year's to get ahead of the schedule—said, "No way, Sis. I'd never get them back. I saw yours on the toilet tank upstairs."

"Oh, that's right!" Mabel said cheerily. "I was gonna shower with them, but then I wondered if keys rust." She thundered upstairs and then back down again jangling, and from the door to the garage shouted back, "I'm going to the post office! I'm driving there! In a car! See you later, fam!"

The door slammed. Mom sighed. "Do you think she'll be all right?"

"I think so," Dipper said, chewing on his pen. "And the new will wear off before long. I wouldn't worry, Mom."

She paused by the sofa and ruffled his hair. "Worrying about you two is my job," she said. Leaving him, she went into the kitchen, and Dipper heard her get busy. Saturday was the day the cleaning lady came in, and Mom had to make sure the house was clean enough for her to clean. It was a vicious circle.

He went back to his scribbling. He was tentatively calling this book "Terror in Wax," but he thought that might change. So far, his two novels had been mostly based on things that had happened to him and Mabel in Gravity Falls: the time when the Gnomes had kidnapped Mabel (his version was _Bride of the Zombie_ ) and the time they had gone monster-hunting on the lake and had found Old Man McGucket at the controls of a robotic Gobblewonker ( _It Lurked in the Lake)._

Dipper didn't really like the title "Terror in Wax," but it would do as a place-holder. He could see that the trouble was the timing of the plot. He'd beefed up _It Lurked in the Lake_ so there was a three-day run-up to the search for the lake monster (which took up the second half of the book) and had thrown in some details about, well, Mabel and Gideon and himself and Wendy, though fictionalized and using different names. Not too many details. More of them would come in later stories.

But as he remembered it, their discovery of the wax figures in the hidden room in the Shack—funny, the Shack had so many places inside to be so small on the outside—and Mabel's creation of Wax Stan, and then the beheading, the investigation, and the final fight had taken place all within a couple of days. He was figuring out how to spread the action a little more without obviously padding the book.

Time passed. Dipper could have walked from their house to the post office and back in forty-five minutes, but it took Mabel a little over an hour and twenty minutes in the car. She came in with two big paper bags. "How many stamps did you _buy_?" he asked.

"Foosh!" she said. It was a hot day, and instead of a sweater she wore a loose sleeveless pink top with a print of a speeding hot-rod on the front. "I went bargain hunting. The Farmers' Market is right there at the post office, so after I got the stamps—Mom! Where are you?"

Their mother came in from the downstairs guest bathroom, a scrub brush in her hand. "What took you so long—and how many stamps did you _buy_?"

"Just twenty, Mom! Oh, I got the Elvis ones. If you don't like them, I've got time to drive back and trade—"

"They'll be fine." Mom had taken one of the two bags from her. "Sweet corn? Tomatoes? Why did you—"

"The Farmers' Market, Mom! These were great bargains! Look! Kiwis! High in Vitamin C! And they're _hairy_!"

"All right, put the food away," Mom said. "It's almost time for—"

The doorbell rang. It was Mrs. Alvarez, who did their weekly cleaning. She came in, said, "Oh, the twins are back! Hi, you, two!"

"Hi!" Mabel said. "I bought you some corn!"

* * *

While Mrs. Alvarez worked, Mabel volunteered to drive Dipper and Mrs. Pines out for lunch somewhere. Mom caved, and they went to Homeroom, a nearby restaurant that specialized in exotic varieties of mac and cheese. By the time they got back, Mrs. Alvarez was finishing up on the second floor.

She rested for a while before leaving, and Mrs. Pines and she sat drinking tea in the dining room. They caught up on what had been going on with Luisa, Mrs. Alvarez's daughter, who was starting college this year, and with her son Roberto, who was a senior at Piedmont High. Dipper knew him slightly. Mr. Alvarez's allergies were still bothering him, but the berry-packing company he worked for had promoted him to an office job, so Mrs. Alvarez hoped his health would improve once he was away from the packing line. Strawberries choked him up.

Later, Dipper and Mabel went out to the pool and alternately lazed in the lawn chairs—the sun was hot—or dunked in the pool to cool off. "School starts Monday," Mabel said.

"I know."

"You heard from Wendy?"

"We text every day and talk every other day," Dipper said. "I'll phone her this evening, after she's off work. It's my day to call."

"How is she?"'

"Missing us."

Mabel chuckled. "Us? Missing _us?_ You sly dog, you! I'll bet she's missing her mental make-out sessions!"

"Shh-shh," Dipper said. He often regretted having mentioned to Mabel that he and Wendy could get passionate without, you know, doing anything physical, beyond holding hands.

Mabel giggled but dropped the subject of Wendy for about five seconds. Then she asked, "Have you told her about Billy?"

"Not yet," Dipper said. "I want to know more before I start to worry her."

"Grunkle Ford?"

"Maybe I'll call him tomorrow, after Billy visits," Dipper said. "I mean, really, all I've got to go on are our dreams and visions. When I know more—yeah, though, I ought to talk to him."

With an evil leer, Mabel said, "Yeah, but first, when Billy and his sisters come over, let's get him off by himself. You know, where nobody can hear him scream. We'll grill him then."

"I . . . don't think that's the right approach," Dipper said.

"Where do you get that stuff? Give him the old third degree! Interrogate him, I say! Interrogate! Hey, we got the pool. Do we have like a surfboard? We could waterboard him!"

"That," said Dipper, "is wrong on so many levels."

"Break his will!" Mabel said, still off on her rant.

"Mabel, no. First, that isn't even what waterboarding is, or how it works. Second, it doesn't work. Third, it's cruel and evil. Fourth, it's illegal."

Mabel looked a little abashed. "Oh."

"And fifth and sixth," Dipper said, "even if Billy is Bill reborn—and I suppose he must be—I don't think he's got any memory of, uh, his previous life, I guess? Anyhow, would you really hurt a ten-year-old? Even if it was Bill?"

"Well—"

"Remember, you didn't want to hurt Gideon. Even when he tried to snip out my tongue with shears."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Mabel said. "But it's gonna take _forever_ to find out for sure. And even then, what are we supposed to do? Teach Billy how to be a good person? _I_ don't even know how to be a good person! I know how to be great and fabulous and amazing, but good? _That's_ tough."

Slowly, Dipper said, "I think . . . it's more a matter of thinking about other people. Bill was the most selfish person I ever knew."

"He wasn't a person," Mabel said. "But if we say he is, just for the sake of argument, are you sure about the _most selfish_ bit? There's Grunkle Stan!"

Dipper shook his head. "That's different. Think about it. Grunkle Stan was doing everything for the family. For Ford and us. He was greedy, not selfish. He didn't want the money for himself. Bill—even when he had helpers, those Henchmaniacs, he didn't _care_ about them. If one of them died or got hurt, Bill would just tell them to walk it off. All he wanted was everything, and he wanted it for himself."

"You," Mabel accused, "are turning into a wordsmith."

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Sunday, 8:45 PM. Billy Sheaffer and his sisters came over this afternoon. The girls swam in the pool with Mabel. Billy was wearing trunks, but wouldn't get in the pool, not even in the shallow end._

 _So, I turned on the sprinklers and he and I chased around through them instead. We sat in the lawn chairs and watched the girls playing in the pool. I asked him why he didn't want to go in._

" _I have bad dreams," he said slowly. "Dreams where I can't breathe. Dreams where our house is on fire and I'm inside and can't find the door out. And smoke fills up my lungs. I'm scared."_

 _He sounded miserable. I asked, "If you went in swimming, you think you'd dream about—"_

" _Drowning," he said. "I know I would. I hate being this scared all the time."_

" _Sorry, man," I said. After a while I said, "I've been scared, too. Lots of times."_

" _Can we not talk about it?"_

" _OK. Hey, did you try out all the games? They still work?"_

" _Yeah, they're great. I'd never played Castle Morbid before. That one has good graphics."_

 _I remembered playing that one when I was just a little older than Billy. It was a gloomy game, where you wander down these endless dark corridors seeking a way to the highest tower and to freedom. Monsters constantly pop up all around you, and there are nine boss levels, ending with the big boss, who's almost impossible to kill. The worst thing about it for me was that you start out with an NPC sidekick. You can customize the appearance of your guy and the NPC, and I made the sidekick female and made her look a little like Mabel._

 _What I didn't know starting out was that on Level 5, the sidekick gets killed. Every single time. It's programmed in the game and you can't stop it from happening._

 _But then on Level 6, she regenerates. Except she's no longer the same, though you don't know that. As you go through Levels 7 and 8, you gradually realize she's like a zombie, and she's turned evil, and she's trying to destroy you._

 _And—this was the part that gave ME nightmares—before you can open the gateway to Level 9, you have to kill her. And she pleads and begs for her life, and you get flashes of all the times on Levels 1-5 when she saved your butt. But if you don't get her, she gets you. I played up to Level 9 just once. Then made a save point just after getting to the top level. I never went back to the lower levels, ever. I couldn't fight the sidekick again. That part was too gut-wrenching._

 _I warned Billy, "In Castle Morbid, don't get too attached to your sidekick."_

" _He's helped me a bunch of times," Billy said. "I've saved halfway through Level 3. Level 2 was tough."_

" _They get harder," I said._

" _I don't like Otto's Autos so much," Billy said. "I don't like driving games."_

" _Maybe you can trade with somebody at school," I suggested._

 _He nodded. "Yeah, maybe. If I get up the nerve to talk to anybody about stuff like video games. Dipper, do you have a lot of friends at school?"_

" _Not so many," I admitted. "I've got more up in Gravity Falls, where we spend the summers."_

" _I don't make friends easy," he said. "I think I creep people out. My eye weirds them out, you know."_

" _It shouldn't. It's barely noticeable."_

" _Yeah, but sooner or later somebody always asks how come it moves different and how come I can't close it all the way."_

" _What do you tell them?"_

" _I just say I can't help it."_

 _I thought for a minute. "Dude, I'd just say, 'I was born without one eye. This is a prosthetic one, just for appearances. I've only got one eye, but I don't let it slow me down. It doesn't bother me, so don't let it bother you.'"_

" _Yeah," Billy said. "I should. Except I'm scared they'll be all disgusted and won't like me."_

" _You'll find people who do," I told him. "Mabel always says 'If you want friends, be a friend.'" He looked so solemn and sad that I added, "Hey, for what it's worth—here's a big secret about elementary and middle school: Everybody's scared. Scared that people at school will think they're lame, or dumb, or funny-looking. Everybody. Trust me on this. It's useless to worry about that. There are bigger things to be afraid of!"_

 _He nodded and muttered, "Yeah. Water. And fire."_

 _And even in the hot afternoon sun, he shivered._


	5. Chapter 5

**Neighbors**

 **(September 7-9, 2015)**

* * *

 **5**

Wendy was sympathetic but cautious. "You watch that kid, Dip. If he's got Cipher inside him, he's gonna be evil."

"I have a little of Cipher inside me," Dipper reminded her. It was late on Sunday night, but they were talking on the phone anyway, Dipper in his room, uncomfortable, with a blanket tented over his head to muffle his voice. Mom and Dad slept downstairs, but Mabel had ears like a Vulcan, and no hesitation about eavesdropping.

"That wouldn't stop Bill Cipher," Wendy said, her voice hard-edged. During Weirdmageddon, Cipher had done terrible things to her, and—this for Wendy was even worse—to her family and friends. She admitted to Dipper, "I have a real hard time forgiving him. And I'll never forget."

"I know," Dipper said. He sighed. "I wish we could be together right now. Just so I could touch you."

"Yeah, I'm having Pines pains right now from withdrawal," Wendy whispered sadly. "You just better get your butt up here for Thanksgiving."

"Gonna try my best. Mom and Dad are thinking it over. Dad's willing. Mom's the stubborn one. She says we owe our Grunkles a Thanksgiving here this year."

"Oh, man!" Just from the way Wendy said that, he could picture her flopping back on her bed, rolling her eyes. "Dip, let's you and me never ever get into that dumb notion of owing people visits. Let's just do whatever we think is best, whether it's going to their house or having them come to ours every single freakin' year. It doesn't matter as long as the family's together! This debt-and-payback biz sucks all the joy out of get-togethers."

"I'm with you," Dipper said. "And Grunkle Stan is trying to persuade Mom. I'd say we have a good chance of coming up Thanksgiving week. Better than fifty-fifty, anyhow. Mabel and I are out of school for the whole week, so we could come up on the Friday night or Saturday morning before Thanksgiving, and then Mom and Dad could come up on the Wednesday before."

"You guys gonna drive up?"

"Can't, without somebody 25 in the car. Not until we turn seventeen. But we _could_ fly up if somebody could meet us in Portland. I've got more than enough money saved for two one-way economy tickets. Know if anybody would be available to give us a lift?" He was grinning.

Her voice sounded sly: "Mm, let me think . . . yeah, I think I know a girl. Minute you know what flight you'll be on, you give me a call, OK?"

"You know I will."

They went on to discuss other things, trivial little subjects like love and commitment and yearning for each other. Before they ended the call, Wendy said seriously, "Dipper, I gotta ask: What does Ford think?"

"He doesn't trust Billy Sheaffer," Dipper said. "But what would you expect? Cipher treated Grunkle Ford like crap. Even when Grunkle Ford was lost in the dimensions, trying hard to find his way back home, he obsessed over the fear that Bill was going to possess him again. You know, more than once he actually allowed Bill to take over his body when he thought Bill was his Muse."

"Yeah, you told me. And I know how Bill glommed onto your body when Mabel did that puppet show."

"Right. After that experience, I can get Grunkle Ford's paranoia. Being jerked out of your own body, becoming, like, a ghost—it's horrible. Oh, I told you that Grunkle Ford had insulated his brain from Bill by having a metal plate put in his head. Did I also tell you he did that in Dimension 52? The Oracle's dimension?"

"No. She do it for him?"

"I'm not clear on that. Maybe there are doctors in that dimension."

"Whoever did it, getting a head implant sounds extreme."

"Yeah." Dipper listened intently. "It's not funny. Are you giggling?"

"Sorry, man." Wendy did chuckle a little. "It's not about Ford. I was just thinking back to the puppet show. For most of it you were sitting right beside me in the audience—but I guess that was Bill, not you, huh?"

"Yes, it was Bill," Dipper said, feeling mad all over again. "Bill in my body. Or as Mabel called him—"

"Bipper," Wendy said, giggling again. "Sorry for laughing. You know he hit on me when we were in Soos's truck on the way to the theater, don't you?"

"No," Dipper said, clenching his teeth. "Did he touch you?"

She laughed again. "No, dude! Well, we were shoulder-to-shoulder, you know Soos's truck, but not the kind of touching you mean. He just tried a few lame pickup lines on me. I thought it was you fooling around."

"Wasn't me," Dipper said. "Don't tell me about it, I don't want to know. Maybe when I see you again, you can send me mental images, but right now—I really don't need to hear it."

"I thought you were just being funny. I remember he called me 'Red,'" Wendy said. "Cute the first time, but that got old in like, five seconds!"

"Anyway," Dipper said, forcing his attention back to the conversation he'd had with Ford, "Grunkle Ford figures I'd better do as the Oracle has asked. He says she's only relaying Axolotl's advice, and Axolotl's this super-intelligent force, being, whatever it is. He did tell me to keep an eye on Mabel and not let her get too involved. We're supposed to be super careful. Bill's the most manipulative bast—uh, being he's ever run across, Ford says. He could easily trick my sister into doing something bad."

"I don't really think so," Wendy said. "Mabel outran Bill at the puppet play, and then pinned him down and tickled him until you could take back your own body again. What got me laughing earlier, I kind of wish I'd seen you as a sock puppet. Mabel told me about it and described the whole scene, and it sounded hilarious. And honestly cute, not Bipper-"Red"-cute. Sorry, Dip. I know the whole thing bothers you."

"It does," he agreed. "But you know how it is. Like when Bill turned you into a banner."

"Man, _that_ was awful," Wendy muttered. "Like being dead but still aware! I could see and hear, but I couldn't move or even breathe! Inside, I was silently screaming the whole time. I see what you mean, Dipper. Sorry, man, my bad. I wasn't making fun of you, it's just the way Mabel tells the story—"

"Yeah, when you're a sock, you look funny when you try to look mad," Dipper said. "OK, about Billy, one last thing: Ford says that whatever Mabel and I have to do to help him, it won't be a quick fix. It'll be a long haul and stretch over years, he figures. So . . . looks like this is my hobby now. But one thing I swear to you: Mabel and I definitely will never invite Billy to come up to Gravity Falls with us."

"That," Wendy said, "is fine with me."

* * *

Monday came, and the first day of school. This year Dipper and Mabel had only two classes and lunch period together—their interests were drifting in different directions. On the plus side, their shared classes were first- and last-period, so they'd see each other at the beginning and end of every school day.

Most days, Mabel planned to go home alone—on the bus. Because she had her license, she wanted to drive to school. And she did, every morning, while Dipper took the bus. There were no exceptions to the rule about teens driving with teens in the car, not even for twins. And then in the afternoons, they reversed, and Mabel bussed home while Dipper drove Helen Wheels, mainly because Dipper stayed after school just about every day for track practice.

It was a wee bit irritating to Dipper that every time he drove the car, Mabel insisted on examining it for dents, dings, and scratches when he parked it. So unfair. After all, he wasn't the one who hit the white-and-orange striped traffic barrel. Fortunately, it was plastic and it had been just a glancing blow, no harm done, but even so, Mabel furiously claimed, "It jumped right in front of me!"

At lunch on that first day of school, he learned that Mabel had become his informal publicist. A big, slouchy guy he didn't know came up to the table where he, Mabel, and some of their friends were feasting on turkey slices, carrots, and salad and poked him in the shoulder. "You her brother?" the guy asked, nudging Dipper's shoulder and pointing at an uncomfortable-looking Mabel.

"Yeah, I'm Dipper Pines," Dipper said, wondering what in the world he'd done to attract a bully so early in the game.

" _She_ says you wrote a song or some deal for the Tombstones?" The burly guy's tone made it a question.

"I wrote the music for 'Cold Creek,'" Dipper said. "It's in the liner notes for their album, or you can look it up online."

"Yeah? Well, I just gotta tell you, I like that band's music. But that one cut sucks ass!" The guy snarled out a laugh and walked away.

Mabel looked mortified. "Sorry, Dip," she said. "He's wrong."

"Everybody has different tastes in music," Dipper said. "It doesn't bother me."

But it did. After school, the memory followed him out on the track and messed with his first track practice on the Varsity team. He'd grown a lot since the age of twelve, but even so—he was the second shortest member of the boys' team. And a third of the girls' team were taller than he was, too. Nobody was snide toward him, though—everyone knew he'd had an amazing freshman year and, despite a bad sprain that sidelined him for weeks, a respectable second year on the JV. And some of his old teammates were now on the Varsity squad with him.

Still—he began to wonder whether track would be much fun this year.

The Varsity track coach, Mr. Jorgenson, was tall, balding, blond, pale, and florid-faced. He was built a lot like Mr. Poolcheck, and that fact alone intimidated Dipper. Then, too, Jorgenson's approach wasn't like the JV coach's idea of leading a team. Coach Dinson had always been quick with criticism, but quick with praise, too. He reassured runners—it didn't matter if they lost a race if they tried their best, and he was always encouraging: "You'll do better next time."

Jorgenson, well, he tended to yell a lot, his face turning crimson as he made his criticism clear not only to a runner but also to everyone within earshot: "Were you _asleep?_ You started half a second after everyone else was running! Stay alert, Willben! Curtis, get your rhythm! You're running like a wino after a two-day drunk! Pines! Pace yourself so you have enough to run full-out for that last ten yards! Slowing down ain't gonna win races!"

And when they did well—and partly spurred by his anger at the burly guy's rudeness, Dipper broke his personal best record during the first practice on Monday afternoon—Jorgenson just frowned and grunted, "Pines, I want to see you do better!"

 _Hey, Coach, I just set a record. How's that not better?_

Dipper began to have second thoughts about track on that very day.

He drove home about an hour after Mabel had arrived there by bus. This year his guitar lessons would be two evenings a week, Mondays and Thursdays at 8:00. He also realized he'd have to cut down on practice, because between school and his evening writing sessions, there just weren't enough hours in a day. He'd have to get by on half an hour of guitar practice a day, he decided.

It was shaping up to be a rough year. And it had only begun.

* * *

After school on Tuesday, Dipper learned that Mabel had invited Mina and Mira Sheaffer to their house for dinner—which she threatened to cook. Billy would also tag along.

Having been the guinea pig for some of Mabel's culinary experiments, Dipper thought that the Sheaffer kids might never want to see them again after a Mabel meal.

"I'll help," he said, which was why their meal that evening—oven-fried chicken, green beans with baby potatoes, and corn on the cob (the veggies courtesy of Mabel's visit to the Farmers' Market) turned out to be edible. Left on her own, Mabel had an irresistible impulse to experiment with spices and condiments. There might conceivably be a place for cinnamon, ginger, and candy sprinkles in some chicken dish somewhere, but the world was not yet ready for it.

Mom, who thought that Mabel had done the lion's share of the cooking, was impressed at how well everything turned out. The Sheaffer kids dug in and apparently liked the food. Afterward, Mom sent them "off to play"—she still seemed to think of Mabel and Dipper as toddlers sometimes—and she and Dad did the clean-up.

Mabel and the Sheaffer twins went up to her room for—Dipper was sure—makeovers. In the long, lingering September daylight, Dipper talked Billy into a game of catch. "It's hard for me," Billy said. "No depth perception."

"That's the reason to practice it," Dipper told him. "You can get better at anything as long as you don't give up."

Billy put on the fielder's glove that Dipper had used once when Grunkle Ford had forced him onto a Little Guy's League team. Dipper tossed and caught bare-handed.

They started out only about twenty feet apart, and Dipper lobbed some easy ones, none of which Billy could catch. The blond boy flinched from the first few tosses, missing them cleanly. "I won't hurt you," Dipper promised. He showed Billy how to poise the glove, how to trap the ball in the pocket. "If you get the ball in there," he told the younger boy, "the leather will protect your hand. Even if it's a hard line drive, it won't hurt. Well, not much, not enough to break your hand or anything, just a kind of sting, something you can ignore."

Then after a few absurdly short tosses so Billy could practice positioning the glove, Dipper moved gradually back. At last, Billy was catching every pitch.

Returning the ball was harder for him, though. He had almost no sense of force or aim, and Dipper had to chase after his wild throws. Sometimes he made it, sometimes he didn't. "I'm not any good," Billy said after one wild throw landed in the pool.

Fortunately, the ball floated, and Dipper retrieved it with the pool skimmer. "That just means you've got room for improvement," he said with a smile. "Hang on, we'll let this one dry, and I've got another one in my room."

With Dipper's encouragement and about fifty tries, finally Billy got the hang of throwing the ball roughly in his direction. Most of the time, anyway. Dipper caught ten in a row without much trouble. "Sun's going," he said. "Guess we ought to call it quits. You like the glove?"

"It's OK," Billy said, handing it back to Dipper.

"You can have it if you want. I don't ever play baseball."

Billy grinned shyly. "No, thanks. Nobody wants to play with me. I'd rather leave it here so sometimes you and me can practice. Is that OK?"

"OK with me," Dipper said. They went in and had some lemonade. At the kitchen table, Dipper asked, "How was your first day of school?"

"Terrible," Billy said. "Whole new class, nobody even knows me, and they're already picking on me."

"Fifth grade's tough, man," Dipper said. "Not everybody picked on you, though. Right?"

"No. But this one big mean guy is calling me Cyclops. Already. First day."

"Shrug it off," Dipper said. "Don't show him it bothers you, and he'll forget it. Bullies just want to get a reaction."

"There's one girl who told him to stop," Billy said. "Her name's Esther."

"Do you like her?"

Billy shrugged. "Dunno. She at least talked to me. Didn't ask what happened to my eye. I liked that."

"Tell me about her."

Billy leaned his elbow on the table and his cheek on his fist. "Well . . . she's got sort of browny-reddy hair, if you know what I mean."

"Auburn," Dipper said. "That's the brown-red color."

"And freckles," Billy said, smiling. "A whole patch right across her nose and cheeks."

"Freckled girls can be awfully cute," Dipper said.

"And . . . she told the guy not to call me Cyclops. And we sat together at lunch. She lives on the other side of the park from us. Uh. Her mom's a teacher's aide, but not at our school. Her dad works for the city. And, um, her favorite food is chocolate cake."

"She sounds real nice," Dipper said. _Geeze, when I was ten years old were my crushes this obvious?_

"She kinda reminds me of your sister Mabel," Billy said, drinking the last of his lemonade. "I mean, she likes to laugh, and she makes goofy jokes and all."

"Sounds like she likes you," Dipper said. "There, you've already made one friend at school. You'll find others."

"Yeah, I hope so." Billy took his and Dipper's glasses to the sink and rinsed them. "Wash up?"

"Don't worry about it. I'll put them in the dishwasher later."

They went into the back yard and sat in the lawn chairs, watching the clouds turn orange and then purple, the sky darken, and the stars come out. "Looking up makes me feel funny," Billy said. "Like I might fall off the earth."

That was such a weird thing to say that Dipper had no ready answer. Instead, he fell back on a generality: "Lot of fears don't make much sense. They're irrational. Phobias, they call them."

"Yeah, I've heard of them. Like being scared to stay in room 13 of a hotel. But I have this nightmare. Well, I have a lot of different ones, but anyway. In this one, though, I'm all alone somewhere way out in space, not even close to a star. It's all black and cold. And I'm stuck there forever. And I can't even die."

"Bad dream," Dipper said.

"Uh-huh. Hey, you can go to PG-13 movies."

"Yeah, I can," Dipper said, feeling caught off-base by the change of subject. "Don't go to very many, though. Too busy with school and track and stuff." _And nobody to go with. Seeing even a bad movie with Wendy beside me is one thing. Sitting all by myself, or with Mabel—who has a fifty-fifty chance of getting us kicked out if she overreacts to the movie—that's not as much fun._ "Why?"

"Oh, nothing. It's just that the theater in the mall is showing _Hitler's Zombie Army,_ and I'd like to see it. But it's PG-13. It's about World War II and stuff. I like war history. That's why I'd like to see it."

Dipper smiled. "Billy, let me tell you, with a title like that it's not going to teach you any real history. It's a horror movie, more than anything, a zombie film. Probably it'd be a lot like _The Walking Dead,_ if the dead happened to walk through a recruiting center. Most of the time, that kind of movie is only worth laughing at. My girlfriend and me like to watch these awful old horror movies on TV, just to laugh at how dumb they are. Real zombies—well, I mean, if they were real, they wouldn't act like the ones in movies."

Billy asked, "Are there real zombies?"

 _Whoa! Dangerous subject._ Carefully, Dipper asked, "Have you ever seen any real zombies? Ever heard of anybody who saw one?"

Billy shook his head. Dipper shrugged. "There you go. I'd say your odds of ever finding a real zombie in Piedmont are exactly zero."

"My favorite war movie is _End of the Beginning_ ," Billy said. "No zombies or anything, though. It's about the battle of El Alamein. Have you ever seen it?"

"No, I don't think so," Dipper said.

"Yeah, it's an old movie. Dad bought a DVD of it. I really like it. I've watched it over and over. It's British, I think. The best thing is the DVD cover."

 _That's a weird thing to like about a movie._ Dipper thought it but didn't say it.

That evening after Billy and his two sisters—now looking like edgy nineteen-year-old Goth girls in the makeup Mabel had troweled on during their make-over session in her room—went home, Dipper opened his laptop and looked up the movie that Billy had mentioned on the IMDB. He found it: a British film from 1987. According to the blurb, "The fact-based story of Rommel's bid to capture the Suez Canal and the British army that held him off." It only got three stars in the two user reviews, though.

The article did include a picture of the DVD, and looking at it, Dipper nodded. Yeah. It figured. Now he understood.

The cover photo featured Hugh Bastable, the actor playing the German General Rommel, facing off against Edmund Westfiggle, a grizzled, mustached actor playing the British General Montgomery.

In the background, but towering over their profiles, loomed one of the Egyptian pyramids.

In a garish bright yellow.

Dipper switched off the laptop.

Oh, man.

He had a feeling it was going to be a long, hard school year.

* * *

 _The End_

 _(But we'll see more of Billy.)_


End file.
